Hailed as a game changer in some quarters for the way we interact with stories and brands, Transmedia is gaining prominence as a concept and technique for producers to engage with consumers across multiple connected devices.

It is a logical extension of ideas such as cross platform and 360-degree production but its roots lie decades back, albeit in other guises. Stories were extended onto different platforms for ‘Star Wars’ where it was mostly seen as a marketing and merchandise exercise. Now the web allows the audience to immediately feedback their thoughts to writers and producers so that the audience becomes a participant in the story’s creation. The term itself was first floated in the early 1990s to represent the idea that narrative can flow from one media platform to the next and resurrected in 2006 by MIT professor Henry Jenkins whose work ‘Convergence Culture’ lent the movement a conceptual template.

In April last year the credit ‘Transmedia Producer’ was officially ratified by the Producer’s Guild of America, as the person “responsible for shepherding narrative content across at least three different media platforms.”

For its exponents, transmedia is not simply about porting the same content across multiple media but doing so in such a way that each platform contributes a new and unique aspect to the story. Transmedia storytelling can be envisaged as a giant jigsaw, where the pieces exist across platforms and as the user consumes these isolated story chunks, they combine to create a bigger story.

Speaking at an IBC conference session on the use of social media, Tom McDonnell, founder of cross platform content specialist Monterosa, explained: “Large studios and broadcasters, as well as indie producers can tell various parts of the same story using distinct media, exploiting the qualities unique to each platform. So when you watch a TV show, you might follow a sub-plot that spills on to the web, then read the dénouement in a graphic novel.”

Lost, Heroes and Skins are examples of linear TV programmes conceived with a complementary online narrative that feeds characters and subplots back into the TV show.

Characters may be given Facebook pages so that between episodes fans can keep up to date with them via video blogs and status reports. A transmedia approach gives the story depth and keeps it alive long after the basic TV content has aired. Rather than producing a TV show which is aired once and forgotten about, transmedia permits the creation of persistent storyworlds which extend the life of the product.

Other classic examples come from feature film (Head Trauma) and gaming (Electronic Arts’ Dead Space). The Spanish version of Endemol’s Big Brother has its own 24 hour programme, clothing brand, online games, websites and social network communities to generate much more of a story than the straightforward audiovisual product.

The multiplicity of net-enabled devices and near instantaneous broadband connections have certainly helped evolve cross-platform projects into transmedia ones but smartphone growth has arguably been the biggest catalyst for its take-off.

Since people carry mobiles with them everywhere, the phone - especially those with GPS functionality - can be used to weave in all manner of locations, objects or events into a narrative blurring the line between reality and fiction.

“The crux to getting transmedia right lies in the interface between technology and narrative,” advises McDonnell.

It’s no coincidence that Nokia has made the biggest impact so far in this space having sponsored a number of projects and even created one of its own (Conspiracy for Good).

Brands can of course be co-opted to fund transmedia projects in the first place. Indeed what may define its potential is whether transmedia can generate new revenue streams for broadcasters to invest in content. The attraction of transmedia to brands is that it encourages participation and chance to shift from intrusive display advertising into genuinely compelling experiences.

It could all of course be a passing fad but to others it’s transmedia represents a paradigm shift in content production.

They argue that, if done properly, it speaks to a generation of people who are already moving rapidly and instinctually from one platform to the next. The problem right now is that most of their content is not moving at the same pace with them.